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Friday, January 25, 2008

Irrationality

Imagine being on a cross-country road trip from New York to southern California. On the third day of the trip you cross over into the “bible belt” of the USA. At first, everything seems normal but as you pass by the centers of the cities you see strange decorations, piles of stones, and red paint splattered near the rock piles. Eventually you pass through a lively town center one night and watch the horror as you realize that the town centers around here are not filled with decorations as you thought, but instead is the stage where weekly stoneings are take. The decorations are the mark of christianity, a crucifix, and signs proclaiming certain lines from the bible. This town in particular is observing Leviticus 20:13 “If a man has sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They are to be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads. in this town only the homosexuals are being murdered, but in other towns people of other faiths are murdered, and still in others people are sold into slavery. This is the world of christian fundamentalism and it must be stopped before it starts again. In the following paragraphs I will explain in the best detail I know, the process of my realization that religion is completely false, reasons that I enjoy debunking it, my own subjectivities on the issue, finally some questions I have and where I stand as an insider or outsider.

I was not formally introduced to religion until about age five My grandfather had passed away and I was very upset over it. I stayed up late one night asking my mother all sorts of questions about death. I would ask, “What happens when a person dies?” “Does everybody die?” and naïve questions of this sort. To this I was answered that, yes indeed everybody dies, and that when you die you are re-united with god. These answers undoubtedly led to a more rigorous line of questioning. I asked “What is god?” and I received a vague, “god is who created everything that exists.” I continued asking questionsand continued to get vague responses until I began to think, “Perhaps I am just too young to understand these concepts; my mom is smart so I will trust her.” Thankfully my parents were never very religious so I didn't have to deal with these questions often,maybe once a year when we would go to church. Other than that religion and the concept of god occupied only the smallest of places in my mind.

As I entered high school I started to become aware of the religiosity of my peers. Many of them went to a thing called “youth group” which raised my curiosity. Terms were being thrown around that seemed like jargon to me, so much so that I truthfully did not know the difference between a catholic and a christian. Eventually I confronted my parents on this issue and declared that I wanted to start going to church, to learn about my supposed “faith.” For about six months we went weekly to a lutheran church in Ann Arbor. I wanted to know what christianity was all about, I tried to immerse myself in it. I even went so far as to have myself baptized at the age of thirteen hoping that this ritual would bring me closer to answers about the divine. Sadly it did not bring me any, but the confidence of my peers and parents in this religion was unwavering so I assumed the right questions were not being asked. For a twelve week period every Sunday after church my mother and I would meet with our pastor for bible study. The pastor would pick out a few verses every week to help explain the meaning and truth of christianity. This only brought up more questions. I would ask the pastor my questions, but he would just refer me to an event called “alpha.” Alpha is a group that meets for new christians every week at the church. At the beginning of the meeting a short film was shown about happiness, god, and how to achieve happiness by pleasing god, etc. This was followed by a group discussion. I decided to attend this group so that hopefully my questions could be answered. After watching the video with four adults, who were at least three times my age, I started asking questions. This time I had very precise questions, and the answering these questions was of dire importance. I asked about gods love. I asked, “If god loves all of us, why do many children starve to death in other countries?” The adults responded that it is because “god cannot do everything at once, he focuses on bigger things that are more important in the long run.” This answer was not satisfactory, however I was willing to let it go until a woman in the group (who agreed with that answer) informed me that god is also very personal, and that he personally helps her pick out her shoes in the morning. The rest of the group also agreed with that statement, and complimented her on her intimate relationship with god. It was at this moment I realized it was all a sham.Apparently god is too busy to feed starving children but has plenty of time to help plump middle class women pick out their shoes.

Although I was only fourteen at the time I realized the grave contradictions being made. I realized that it was not my problem that I did not understand religion, it was the fact that it truly did not make a bit of sense. Nobody could answer my innocent questions: not the pastor, not my parents, not my peers, not my church mates, and especially not the archaic text of the bible. At first I became open to all the religions of the world, perhaps one of them was true. After some searching I realized all the religions had this deeply rooted irrationality to them. I pronounced myself as an atheist. I had come to this realization, not only all by myself, but in spite of all of the major social influences in my life: my parents, my friends, and more broadly, my entire school. I thought that if I had come to this conclusion in spite of all the influences around me, certainly with a little bit of logical influence anybody would see the inherent irrationality of religion. I was wrong, dead wrong.

Since the dawn of publicly available high-speed Internet, the faithful have found a hard time making their views look anything but foolish. The free exchange of ideas and the anonymity of the Internet provides a strong backbone to the individual with less popular ideas. On the Internet, it is the ideaswho compete for prosperity, not people. There is not a single rational argument in defense of religion. Without the influence of social pressure or charisma, the idea of jesus christ being some sort of deity is laughable.

I enjoy partaking in the debunking of religion because I find it amusing that humans, who have a capacity for great intelligence and reasoning, will throw it all away when the subject of religion approaches. It is as if the subject of religion is exempt from rational inquiry. This probably stems from the fact that a “faithful” person is taught that even considering the idea that god or jesus is not real is one of the greatest sins against god, and those who are skeptical are in cahoots with the devil. Some of these people will still try to debate, always failing. Consider the contradiction of omnipotence, omniscience and free will. Supposedly, god is all powerful and all knowing, and supposedly humans have free will. To be all knowing, it means to know all past, present, and future. To be all powerful, it means to have the power to do anything desired. So god created us knowing exactly how we would turn out. He is incapable of doing something without knowing all the past, present, and future outcomes of his creation. He knows before you were even born whether or not you are going to hell or to heaven. Clearly, there is no free will. Some clever debaters might say, “being all powerful means he can do whatever he wants, and so there can be free will in spite of this.” This is false. Consider the paradox; can an omnipotent being create a rock that is so heavy that he himself cannot lift it? If he can’t, he isn’t omnipotent. If he can, he isn’t omnipotent. There is no such thing as omnipotence. This is just one example of the sorts of debates I like to engage in. Essentially my initial motive for debunking religion was because I thought human foolishness was humorous, but now I have a slightly more altruistic motive. I can clearly see that religion is a destructive force in all of human civilization. It is important that these religious ideas are publicly questioned and debated. For the longest time atheists just kept quiet because our ideas were considered offensive, but this silence resulted in the accumulation of religious ideas being spread around unchecked, like a disease.

Clearly anyone who has an opinion has subjectivities, and I am no different. It is subjective of me to say that religion is a disease. It is subjective of me to say that religion should be phased out, and it is subjective for me to say religion is a destructive force. However, it is objective that religion is inherently irrational. This stems from the logical contradictions of religious texts. It is objective to say that millions have been killed over religion. It is objective to say that the god of the bible endorses slavery, murder, rape, and genocide. Simply my subjectivities about religion stem from my subjective morality. I do not think murder, rape, slavery or genocide are good things, thereforeI think that a religion that endorses these things is bad. It becomes destructive when these sorts of religions have a large influence on a culture. From the crusades to to the attacks on the world trade center, religion has been behind many of the most evil acts human civilization has ever inflicted on itself.

As far as being on the inside or on the outside of this “idea,” I am on both sides. I am on the inside when we are talking about atheism, but I am on the outside in most social situations in the USA. Because the amount of religious people in this country outnumbers the non-religious, I would say that overall, I am on the outside. But when compared to the average industrial nation, I am on the inside, as all industrial nations are far less religious than the USA. I have a few questions about this topic, mostly, why is it that the most religious people are typically the least educated? Why do so many people think that religion is necessary for morality, when the most atheistic nations in the world have the lowest crime and violence? What causes a person to believe something so much that no amount of evidence will sway your belief?

The scenario of driving through the bible belt to find people being stoned to death is an exaggeration. However this is common practice in area's where religious fundamentalism is accepted. With the growing levels of fundamentalism in the united states, it will not be long before things like this are a regular occurrence. Fundamentalism in the middle east is causing major problems in the world today, and the growing amount of fundamentalism in the US is only going to worsen this issue. I have learned a lot since that fateful day when I was five and I asked my mother about death. I have come to find that all religion is false, religion is destructive, and I enjoy debunking it not only because I find human foolishness humorous but also because it is important that these irrational ideas not be left unchecked.

2 comments:

There is no logical contradiction in saying God loves all of us is but is too busy to help starving children and that he helps me pick out my shoes in the morning. It just means God loves all of us, he just loves me a lot more than starving children. This may conflict with your personal morality (and with that of any Christian thinker or theologian)but it does not constitute an illogical or irrational statement. Your loss of faith was therefore a result of personal conscience. It was also to a response a speculative statement having no origin in the bible. Other theologians have given somewhat more credible responses.

I'd like to point out that according to Jeremiah 31:31-34 the covenant God made with moses that included the ten commandments and the laws of Leviticus, was broken and no new covenant established until the prophesied covenant of the Messiah. Therefore the old contract, being broken, cannot be used to justify any particular viewpoint regarding whether or not something is a sin. In fact, the old testament laws are all invalid in Christianity. Jesus said the new covenant was written in the thinking and affections of its members. Paul in fact dissociates the new covenant from the old in 2 Corinthians 3:6, "He has made us competent as ministers of a new covenant—not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life." The old testament has therefore been invalidated completely and any human law can have no religious basis.

A belief in free will is not necessary to being a Christian because the Bible doesn't have anything definite to say on the subject. Nor, in fact, does the bible ever say that God is omnipotent. Therefore it is impossible for a Christian to enter into a logical contradiction on this point no matter his or her beliefs.

Having your claim that religion increases the internal or external tendency to violence of an average culture taken seriously requires some kind of statistical evidence to back it up. Christians make the opposite argument. I have never seen any support for either position

You'll have to find some other evidence in order to strengthen your arguments.

That pretty much proves that the most atheist countries are not lowest in crime. But even if they were, there are thousands of factors that can skew that data. The US is number one in crime but to relate that purely to the USA's majority belief in religion, would be ignorant.